quick question, is the diameter specified for a car wheel, the outer diameter of the rim (ie largest possible) or is it the internal diameter of the tyre bead?

Eg, if I put a tape measure across the largest diameter of a 16″ wheel, would it measure 16″?

“internal diameter of the tyre”

http://www.carbibles.com/tyre_bible_pg4.html

you’ve answered your own question – ‘Wheel’ not ‘wheel and tyre’

cheers macavity
highclimber, I don’t get you?

I’ll tell you for why.
I bought a set of wheels, advertised as 16″. I never fitted them as I hadn’t realised about insurance increasing for after-market wheels. So I put them on ebay.
Sold them, but the buyer has disputed the size, claiming they’re marked as 15″. I had measured them when finding suitable boxes, and made them 16″ across the rims, which made sense to me.
So, a 16″ wheel should actually be bigger than 16″ across the rim?

highclimber either missunderstood the question or gave the wrong answer.

It’s the diameter of the tyre bead, so yes, its just under an inch less than the actual diameter to allow about 10mm of metal overlaping the bead/tyre.

The buyers correct and you’re a numpty.

Rats.

😐

The buyers correct and you’re a numpty

Well, TBH the original seller is the numpty as he advertised them as 16″ when they weren’t and poor old ir_bandito is the innocent middleman.

Go back to the original seller if possible.

If you need to resell them yourself:

Refund the Ebay buyer.
Relist them on Ebay as 15″.
When they sell, sort a courier to pick ’em up from the refunded buyer and ship to new buyer. THen you don’t have to get ’em shipped back to you and off again. (Done it myself.)

Can’t go back to the original seller. They were on ebay, but didn’t meet the reserve. So I emailed the seller, went round and paid cash…

The new buyer is some sort of car dealer/breaker, so he may be prepared to buy them off me with a discount instead to either resell at profit, or use on a different car.
But good point about asking him to hang on to them while I re-advertise.

In the meantime, I’ve asked him for evidence of them being the wrong size, just in case he’s trying to pull a afast one on me…

Ah well, at least you’ve learned something new.

Good luck with it. 🙂

They’ll be stamped something like 5.5j15
5.5 = rim width

J = shape of the tyre bead

15 = diameter

Possibly with an ET figure which is the offset/inset from the hub flange to the center of the rim.